Minkata and fan ages

[Karkadann]

another question concerning fan ages

How will the fan ages be picked I assume we can narrow it down with can the age writer still be contacted, does the quality of the age fit with the standards required as far as visual technical and story, and then with what remains we may have room for all of them its just a matter of which one go's first.

any idea's?

[JWPlatt]

I think the reasonable plans is to see what happens; do what we need to do when it is necessary so we don't spend time on grander schemes that don't happen. When we see how many ages start to come in, we can respond appropriately to it. In the mix is how many ages are ready and how many Cyan can handle at a time. Also, of course, how many books can be prepared for those ages in the new Library by the Nexus/Library developers. I don't anticipate a flood of ages at first, but it would be nice to be surprised. That would be a good problem.

[Karkadann]

Something I have been struggling with for some time, "spending time and effort on grander schemes that might not happen" I guess im thinking too far ahead of the game, and preparing for a possibility or probability hoping is an inevitability. However it would be nice to have a list of Fan Created Ages that have been prepared and approved for other upcoming MOULa type shards to choose from if Cyan does not wanna go that route for what ever reason. This way the other MOULa type shards will have a wider variety of Fan ages to choose from, which will encourage people to visit more of them more often to see whats new

[JWPlatt]

It sounds like you want one of these:

http://drcsite.org/project.php

That's something very doable. We'll see about setting up a wiki page for it unless one already exists at the GoW. I should add that some age developers won't want their age known until actual release.

[Mac_Fife]

I think we probably need to avoid making an assumption that because an age has been made publically available on one shard that it is automatically offered for use on MOULa - while I expect many age writer's would be happy for Cyan to consider their work for inclusion on MOULa I can also accept that some authors might not wish it.

I would actually be inclined to suggest that the author needs to expressly offer an age for MOULa. Further, I would image that there needs to be some form of agreement on the licensing terms that apply to the age: That may be influenced by the sources of material used in the age (e.g. if some textures were not the author's own work, but drawn from other source).

[Karkadann]

So a Open Source Age Manager sounds a bit more complicated then I had originally anticipated, but not impossible.
I just thought it would be nice to have a data base server with ages that have been prepared and approved for Open Source shards that the Shard Admins can choose from
and then others can see what fan ages are available for Open Source in case they have plans to start their own Open Source Shard

[JWPlatt]

If it is possible for age developers to release their content with a standard MOULa age installer wrapper (to be written?), a simple download link would suffice.

[Karkadann]

Has their been any progress on that age exporter for blender that exports ages for the new game engine open source Uru uses?
Im sure it would be a big help with Fan Age For MOULa type game engine

[Hoikas]

Deledrius wrote a very good post today on the GoW forum that answers your question very well. I will italicize the most relevant portions.

PyPRP2 is essentially superseded. It was an attempt to rewrite PyPRP1 more sanely. PyPRP1 was built very organically from many sources at a time in which we didn't know very much about Plasma and were still learning, as well as varying levels of Python proficiency, not to mention fighting against Blender 2.4x. PyPRP1.x is no longer actively developed. PyPRP2 was meant to be a rewrite that took advantage of the more mature libHSPlasma library, as well as integrating into Blender the options in a more artist-friendly way that doesn't require YAML for alcscript. Versions from Blender 2.5x on have much better options for plugin integration, and the plugin API was changing drastically, so PyPRP2 was abandoned in its infancy (it can export basic Ages containing geometry, collision, and texturing, AFAIK, but not much else) and development on Korman began, but a bug in the version of Python used by Blender has temporarily stalled progress. I hope that it will continue soon. The number of active developers in the Uru community is very low currently, and those who remain are working on all aspects including engine improvements, tools, and even content. It's like butter scraped over too much bread.

Luna is currently lobbying with the Blender developers to update their bundled version of Python. In the meantime, I am forced into using a heavily hacked Blender to do any (slow) work on the plugin. I have a very clear vision for Korman. I am focusing on quality and deliberate design decisions, the antithesis of PyPRP. Also, due to the nature of the engine, export code is very tedious to write (and I'm not big on tedium). The plugin will be ready when it's ready and not a moment sooner.

EDIT: I don't mean for this to be harsh, I just want to set expectations. When I'm the project lead/hero programmer, quality is most important.

[Karkadann]

I don't mean for this to be harsh, I just want to set expectations. When I'm the project lead/hero programmer, quality is most important.

With an attitude like that, I know it will be worth the wait.
Thank you for a quick response